SONGS FOR GIRL GUIDES & GIRL SCOUTS
How it began
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After creating, and then delivering a new Girl Guide leader's training course in 2019-20, I became aware of how useful it would be to have the songs they needed to know in one place. I started small, just 100 songs added to YouTube channel, but this quickly outgrew the initial plan.
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I discovered the world of collecting vintage songbooks was fun, cheap and, importantly for Hong Kong, didn't take up too much room. Also, there was COVID raging outside so I had time on my hands.
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This then morphed into recording songs from as many old, out of print songbooks as I had the energy to do.
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I now own approximately 70 songbooks from UK, USA, Canada and Australia, with more on my wish-list The oldest one in my collection dates back to 1926.
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It was from this special interest that my next one grew; researching and writing the biographies of women from the world of Girl Guide and Girl Scout music, starting with Mary Chater to then publish to Wikipedia.
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This has now become more foremost activity, with articles spanning royal wedding cakes, medieval windows and brutalist architecture.
I set myself the challenge of recording
all the English language songs from the
four World Centre songbooks: